What the papers say

US views on the Middle East, compiled by William Fisher

The US media appeared overwhelmed this week by the ‘Swift Boat’ controversy dogging presidential contender John Kerry, and all but a few major print outlets virtually ignored many other important international developments.

A Swift Boat example from The Washington Post (August 21): “The latest advert produced by an anti-Kerry group assails Kerry for having accused American GIs of committing atrocities, even though Kerry was merely reporting what other soldiers had said they had done in Vietnam. It features former POWs denouncing Kerry for having essentially provided aid and comfort to the enemy. One of these POWs is Kenneth Cordier, a retired air force colonel who is a director of an organization called NAM-POWs. In the ad, Cordier says, Kerry “betrayed us in the past. How could we be loyal to him now?” The ad does not, for some reason, identify Cordier as a member of the veterans’ steering committee of the Bush-Cheney campaign. But after the latest Swift Vets ad was released, Cordier no longer appeared on the list of veterans advising the Bush campaign.”

www.washingtonpost.com

The New York Times (August 20) published an op-ed by Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg. “After weeks of taking fire over veterans’ accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush campaign. His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign.”

www.nytimes.com

Writing in US News and World Report (August 30), former presidential advisor David Gergen says it is “time to face the real issues… as our presidential campaign descends into the muck over who did what to whom during the Vietnam War… both sides should move on…. We need to stop hiding from harsh realities and get on with it.”

www.usnews.com

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a major study of attitudes of the US electorate. It concluded: “For the first time since the Vietnam era, foreign affairs and national security issues are looming larger than economic concerns in a presidential election.”

www.pewresearchcenter.org

The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse issue remains very much alive. More fuel was added to the fire with a leaked copy of the anxiously awaited Fay Report. According to The New York Times (August 18) the report will conclude, “Extensive testimony in several hearings over the past few months to determine whether the soldiers should face courts-martial has produced no evidence that the soldiers were under direct orders.”

www.nytimes.com

But the Toronto Star (August 20) reported: “US military doctors and medics at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were ‘complicit’ in the torture of Iraqi detainees and faked death certificates to try and cover up homicides, says a report in a top British medical journal. The scathing analysis in The Lancet puts the spotlight on the role of medical professionals in the torture scandal.”

www.realclearpolitics.com

And Amnesty urged its supported to “Bring justice to thousands still illegally detained in Iraq…. Thousands of men, women, and children are still held without charge or trial in detention facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, after the official end of the occupation on 28 June 2004.”

www.aiusa.org

A number of major newspapers carried stories about the beginning of the trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A Washington Post editorial (August 23) said, “Since the Supreme Court ruled in June that federal courts have jurisdiction over legal challenges by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the government and attorneys for detainees have been struggling over how to implement the court’s decision. The court itself was not helpful in this task.”

www.washingtonpost.com

“Crying Wolf in the War Against Terror” is the title of Andrew Cohen’s column in the Los Angeles Times (August 16). “The feds face a stunning blow to credibility by releasing a long-jailed US citizen. ‘Never mind,’ the feds now say to Yasser Esam Hamdi, the alleged enemy combatant whose case was decided in June by the US Supreme Court. ‘Never mind that we threw you into the brig and then fought like wildcats to deprive you of fundamental constitutional rights. Never mind that we told federal judges that you were a dangerous enemy of the United States.’”

www.latimes.com

Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor wrote (August 19) about “The Battle of Ideas Within Islam.” He said, “The Washington Post reports on the connection between the Saudi royal family and the strict brand of Islam known to the Western world as Wahhabism. Wahhabism, which goes against much of the Koran’s teaching about tolerance for other religions and individuals, has become closely identified with Al Qaeda. The Post reports that it’s also the strain that has been supported by billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family since the early 60s.”

www.csm.com

The Muslim Public Affairs Council launched “a national grass roots campaign to recruit mosques and other Muslim organizations to participate in a specific program to counter terrorist threats directed toward our nation.”

www.mpac.org

The US military came in for some brickbats this week. In an editorial (August 23) The Washington Post wrote, “Last fall, defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ducked the embarrassing matter of grossly offensive, anti-Islamic remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin by asking the defense department’s inspector-general to examine his behavior. This was a ruse. The problem with Gen. Boykin’s words was never the possibility that they violated this or that department regulation – the sort of thing inspectors-general are charged with investigating. The problem was that Gen. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was delivering himself of bigoted remarks – generally while in uniform – that directly undercut President Bush’s repeated insistence that America’s war is not against Islam generally and is not a clash of religious civilizations.”

www.washingtonpost.com

The press continued to follow developments in Najaf, Iraq. The New York Times (August 22) editorialized: “Last week’s national political conference in Baghdad was all but eclipsed by the armed standoff outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. But the Baghdad politicking was just as important for the future prospects of a unified Iraq.... Although it brought together what was probably the most diverse collection of Iraqis ever to sit in a single hall and produced some glimmers of democratic debate, the conference largely failed to achieve the crucial purpose assigned to it in the planning for a transition to a workable democracy.”

www.nytimes.com